


say we will be giving

by mercurybard



Category: Space: Above and Beyond
Genre: Gen, PTSD, Threats of lobotomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurybard/pseuds/mercurybard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a lot of things right with the Marine Corps and a lot of things wrong.  Set at the beginning of "Stay With the Dead"</p>
            </blockquote>





	say we will be giving

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Space: Above and Beyond isn't mine. It belongs 20th Century Fox and a whole host of other people. Title from "Be Giving" by Nico Vega.
> 
> I know some things I presumed about McQueen got Jossed in later episodes, but roll with it. For the man who told us "things are weird; they're sending me home".

In Vitros have no mother, no father. As a lifer in the Corps, McQueen wasn’t planning on having a wife or children. No, he wasn’t joking when he told Hawkes the Corps was all the family he’d ever need, but he’d never expected to grow so attached to one group of marines. He’s admitted it before, and he will say it again—under oath if pushed to it—the 58th have become his children. The five core members at least, the true Wildcards, the ones who have shown such a propensity for survival. At least until this last mission…

And now there’s only one of them left, Lieutenant Nathan West. West, who looks like the poster boy for colonization, not a marine, but he’s made a damn fine marine when he’s not harrying off after that Kylen girl. To see him curled and twisted on a Med Bay bed with his fists clamped over his ears, screaming like his soul’s being torn out with tongs makes McQueen feel like his heart is being ripped out right along with it.

They want to cut. The damn doctors always want to cut even though it will leave Nathan only half a person, if even that. Their procedure will take away any memory he has of the 58th, of his precious Kylen, and leave him useless as a marine. The VA will find him a job as an office drone somewhere, something that requires no higher level thinking. Something nice and repetitive that won’t feel threatening when Nathan can’t remember who he is when he looks in the mirror each morning and has no clue how he got to be the man staring back.

“Cure” and discard—that might as well be the Corps’ motto in situations like this. There’s a lot of things right with the Marine Corps and a lot of things wrong. How they handle the men and women who come back wounded, not in the body but in the mind, is one of those things they can’t seem to get right, even after all these centuries.

“You should eat,” he says, waving the plate in West’s general direction. Nathan’s still getting most of his nutrients from a bag, but the doctors are trying to coax an appetite back with offerings of green Jell-O. Maybe they should try with something that at least pretends to be food, McQueen thinks as he takes a bite and swallows it. There should be a joke here about how the only thing worse than Corps food is Corps Med Bay food, but neither of them is the joking type or in the joking mood. Right now, Nathan has a choice to make, and if he can’t come up with the right answer, then McQueen’s going to have to make an even crueler choice for him.


End file.
